Did you know that hair has different types of porosities? But you may wonder, why does hair porosity actually matter?
Well, knowing your type of hair porosity is essential because it can help you choose the right kinds of products to use on your hair and can determine the right method of hair care you require to follow.
So, if you do not know your hair porosity type yet, check out this article for all the information, below!
What is hair porosity?
The hair has three parts – the cuticle (the outer part of your hair or the protective layer), the cortex (the thickest layer that gives the hair the colour and contains the essential proteins) and the medulla (the central part of the hair which is soft in nature). The only way the water, oils, conditioners and other hair treatments can enter into your hair shaft, is by the cuticle.
Hair porosity refers to the hair’s ability to absorb and retain moisture. So the more porous the hair cuticle is, the more moisture it absorbs. The cuticle opens and closes to absorb or get rid of moisture.
Hair porosity often depends on genetics, but also has other factors contributing to it, like hair treatments like heat, bleaching, dyeing, over washing, over use of products etc and even over exposure to sunlight, causing the cuticles to open up.
Types of hair porosity:
Low porosity: Hair with low porosity has compact cuticles. This means that lesser moisture can be absorbed into the hair and it doesn’t penetrate easily.
Medium/normal porosity: This type of hair, with medium or normal hair porosity means that it is an in between type where the cuticles aren’t very tightly bound, but does absorb and get rid of moisture.
High porosity: High porosity hair type absorbs moisture in quickly, but can lose its moisture very easily causing hygral fatigue. Which means this kind of hair type can dry out quite fast.
How to know your hair porosity?
Well, the only way to know your hair porosity is to test and check the hair strand’s characteristics.
Here is a simple, yet popular test to check one’s hair porosity – the hair ‘float’ test.
Here’s how to do the hair float test:
Fill a transparent glass full with water and drop in one strand of your hair into the glass of water. Then, after a few minutes, wait for the results.
Note: It is important to make sure your hair is well shampooed and washed, before performing this test.
What do you see and what do the results mean?
So once you have dropped your strand of hair in, observe carefully and watch the glass to see whether the hair strand sinks to the bottom, stays afloat or floats somewhere in the middle of the glass.
The meaning of the results:
Low porosity: If the hair strand floats at the top of the glass, it means your hair has low porosity.
Medium/normal porosity: If the hair strand floats somewhere in the middle of the glass, it means your hair has medium/normal porosity.
High porosity: If the hair strand immediately sinks to the bottom of the glass, it means your hair has high porosity.